Rusty Wallace will race again this season, but don't think of it as a comeback. Think of it as doing some good and having some fun at one of his favorite playgrounds on the planet.

The 1989 NASCAR champion, who retired at the end of 2005, put the finishing touches this week on a deal to compete in the Howie Lettow Memorial 150, an ASA Midwest Tour late-model event June 12 at the Milwaukee Mile.

The legendary State Fair Park oval in West Allis is the track Wallace has said he loves most. Although that's as much for the challenge and atmosphere as for his statistics there, the numbers can't hurt.

Wallace, 55, won five times at the Mile, four in the USAC stock-car division and one on the old American Speed Association national tour.

Wallace -- who has admitted he climbed from the seat too soon -- has competed since getting out of Sprint Cup, but this is a little different from a "Saturday Night Special" event for mostly retired drivers, at Bristol Motor Speedway, the Tennessee short track at which he enjoyed so much success.

The Lettow race will be the most important race of the year for a competitive division that includes numerous drivers with NASCAR aspirations.

This event will benefit the MACC Fund for childhood cancer research.

Lettow, who died of cancer in 2010, made his name as one of the best crew chief in short-track racing, primarily in ASA. He lived in Watertown.

The ASA Midwest Tour isn't exactly a replacement for the old ASA but bears some resemblance in the area of the country it serves and the tracks on which it competes. Wallace won the ASA title in 1983, racing against such other future NASCAR stars as Mark Martin and Alan Kulwicki.

Wallace retired from what is now Sprint Cup with 55 victories and became a racing analyst for ESPN. He had said recently that his team had built a "bad-#### hotrod" that would be legal for the ASA Midwest Tour and he had been getting pressure from son Steve to race at the Mile.

Among the other active NASCAR drivers who have committed to the event are 2011Cup race winner David Ragan and Lettow proteges Tony Raines and David Stremme.

Because the milwaukeemile.com site is loaded with information on Milwaukee IndyFest, the IZOD IndyCar Series event on the weekend that follows the Lettow race, the ASA Midwest Tour also has set up a site of its own reachable via asarace.com to provide information.